Abstract
Accessibility, or the ease of reaching destinations, is increasingly being used and examined in both literature and practice. The most common accessibility metric, the cumulative opportunity measure, is often computed as the number of jobs that can be reached within a certain time frame. Aggregating all jobs, however, often inflates the opportunities that can be reached by socially vulnerable residents, which could feed into and/or generate inadequate policy decisions. This study therefore develops the measure of accessibility to low-income jobs for vulnerable residents by public transport, specifically taking into account realized travel times by these vulnerable individuals. This fine-grained measure, computed across 11 major Canadian cities, is a modified place-based accessibility metric that incorporates facets of person-based metrics, allowing planners and policy makers to propose more targeted interventions to improve the quality of life of their cities' most vulnerable populations. The study further allows for direct comparisons between the impacts of variation in accessibility levels between different regions to help create best practices in land use and transport planning.
Highlights
Transport and land use planning are inextricably linked
This study refines the accessibility to jobs concept by developing a measure of accessibility to low-income jobs for vulnerable residents by public transport, and compares that to accessibility to all jobs experienced by the same group of residents across the 11 largest metropolitan regions in Canada
This study has developed the metric of accessibility to low-income jobs for vulnerable residents, which, in contrast with commonly used measures of accessibility to all jobs, provides policy makers and urban planners with a more fine-grained tool to examine the effects of new transport plans and projects across different socio-economic populations
Summary
The modern concept of integrated transport and land use planning goes back to at least the 1930s (one could even argue as far back as 1846 when Charles Pearson suggested coupling housing estates and railway stations in London), interest seems to have been renewed after Calthorpe's proposal advocating transit-oriented developments and the rise of the New Urbanism movement (Barker and Robbins, 1963; Calthorpe, 1993; The Spectator, 1933). This study refines the accessibility to jobs concept by developing a measure of accessibility to low-income jobs for vulnerable residents by public transport, and compares that to accessibility to all jobs experienced by the same group of residents across the 11 largest metropolitan regions in Canada.
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